Your ideas are hugely valuable.

--S.B., Orinda, CA, novelist

“The endeavor of writing can be long and lonely. Mary Carroll Moore, master writing instructor, to the rescue! Moore packs How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with years of gritty good sense and big-picture perspective. Her techniques for drafting, organizing, and polishing a book are practical and time-tested. Here is a first-time book-writer’s best companion.”

--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew,author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir

If I could implement all I've learned from you, I'd have a best-seller!

Pretend you’re a reporter for the New York Times. You’re going to interview your book idea.

List some questions you’d love to ask your book about its form, content, goals. You can start with something nonthreatening, as you would if you were a real reporter.

Ask your book some very good questions. Some ideas from my class are below, or you can make up your own:

What do you want to tell me about yourself?What form suits you best?Who is your readership and how will theyaccess you?What are you most eager to say?What are you most afraid to say?What genre are you?

When it runs out of things to say (or you getnervous about the answers) ask a different question.

The goal of this book-writing exercise is to surprise yourself. You’ll tap the hidden parts of yourself as a writer, the parts we often censor. You can strike gold--if you maintain the attitude of no-assumptions and anything can happen.

Books for the Blocked--These'll Get You Moving Again!

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg

Listen to Me by Lynn Lauber

Marry Your Muse by Jan Phillips

Pencil Dancing by Mari Messer

The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo

Thinking about Memoir by Abigail Thomas

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.Albert Camus

Alone
time is a tricky subject. It hints of antisocial behavior, even
selfishness, but I find it's absolutely essential for my sanity,
balance, and creative spark.

Cain's book gave me enough
scientific backing to accept the idea that I need to be alone a good
portion of each day to hear myself and my story. I'm not alone in that
need, either!

One study revealed that practicing in solitude caused a dramatic jump in
skill. Research psychologist Anders Ericsson evaluated how chess
players and violinists--two very disparate creative groups--took leaps
ahead in their abilities when they had enough "serious study alone."

Three
groups of violinists keep detailed diaries of the time they spent
practicing and how they practiced. All three groups practiced the same
amount of time.

The group that gained the most skills practiced
in solitude. Ericsson found the benefit of "serious study alone" held
true for chess players, athletes in team sports, and other expert
performers.

Writing Demands "Utmost of Self-Revelation and Surrender"Franz Kafka wrote about this to his fiance. They were deeply in love, and the woman wanted to sit near Kafka as he worked.

"Writing
means revealing oneself to excess," Kafka replied, "that utmost of
self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved
with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which,
therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind . . .
. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there
can never be enough silence around one when one writes."

In teaching thousands of writers how to craft their books, I've
discovered that the need for privacy and alone time arrives in different
degrees for each of us. Depending on where you are in the book
journey, your need might be extreme or or it might be small.

To recognize the need, honor it--and not fear it--will make a big difference in your writing.

Alone Time--What It Gives the WriterWe are trained
to interact and react with the world around us. Many of us are
socialized to pay less attention to our own thoughts and needs than to
those of the people we relate to.

As we grow, we master the
balance with this rhythm--or not. Ideally, we find a way to put enough
attention within as well as without.

But when we take on a
large creative project, like a book, the balance must shift. Books
demand more time inside, to think, muse, dream, and design our stories.

If
we operate with our normal social world ratio, our inner lives will
come up lacking, and the book will starve from lack of nourishment.

Alone time--truly alone--gives the writer back the necessary balance.

Summer is an ideal time to retreat, for some writers--hence the
proliferation of writing conferences during the warm months. Retreats
are designed to reawaken our realizations of this balance. Daily life
can easily overwhelm the creative senses. Retreating away from daily
life demands lets our natural, internal pulse come forward again.

We
can retreat at home too, by negotiating alone time. If we spend time
alone regularly, it allows us to practice the balance we need. Soon the
pulse of it becomes like a heartbeat, impossible to live without.

Personally,
I need alone time 4-5 days a week, at least 1-2 hours of it at a
stretch. It takes me that long to hear myself again. My family and I
have to negotiate this; it doesn't happen naturally. We get out our
calendars and schedule alone time along with all the other necessities.

It works best if there is absolutely no one around to attend
to, to even minutely distract from the interior world we need to listen
for. If we can arrange this kind of alone time, it really refreshes the
creative spirit.

Alone Time in PublicIn Quiet,
Susan Cain also talks about being alone in public. Some writers need
the "mere presence of other people" to help the mind "make associative
leaps."

It seems paradoxical, but remember that each creative person is different.

Being
alone in public is not about interaction, like talking on the cell
phone, texting, chatting with the person at the table next to yours.
It's about the presence of people, a crowded cafe or library, but being
with them in the quiet of your own thoughts.

Other humans are
intent in their own lives and you can become busy in yours, with the hum
of their noise in the background to keep you company.

When Susan
Cain began writing her book, she set up the perfect home office with
desk, good light, and plenty of quiet time. But when she tried to
write, nothing happened. She couldn't even launch page one.

So she took her laptop to a neighborhood cafe and wrote most of the book there.

She
says,"The coffee shop was full of people bent over their own computers,
and if the expressions of rapt concentrations on their faces were any
indication, I wasn't the only one getting a lot of work done . . . . the
cafe . . . . was social, yet its casual, come-as-you-please nature left
me free from unwelcome entanglements and able to deliberately practice
my writing. I could toggle back and forth between observer and social
actor as much as I wanted. I could also control my environment. . . . .
I had the option to leave whenever I wanted peace and quiet to edit
what I'd written that day."

Anonymity is the key. If I have to
respond, to be seen and have to acknowledge whomever is seeing me, my
click-in to the Muse is compromised. Being alone in public means being
as invisible as every other person in the room.

I was relieved to
read Cain's explanation. Some of my best writing and revising happens
in cafes when I have had enough quiet time at home. I have my favorite
Starbucks, my Vente cup of Passion iced tea, and my solitude with the
dozens of others also sitting in public, alone.

This Week's Writing Exercise1. Read an excerpt from Quiet (click here) or check out Susan Cain's TED Talk on the Power of Introverts, which Bill Gates named one of his all-time favorites.

2.
Spend some time this week keeping an "alone time" diary. Assess how
much alone time you get, if it's enough or too much or nowhere near what
you need to write your book.

3. Renegotiate your alone time,
based on what you learn. If you are alone too much, take yourself to a
public place and practice being alone with others. See what difference
it makes in your writing and your life.

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Upcoming Writing Classes with Mary

One-Day WorkshopsWriting Your Life: How to Plan, Write, and Develop Your MemoirOne-day workshop, Saturday, July 22, Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Whether you're writing for publication or family legacy, bring your memoir ideas to play with structure, theme, and focus in this hands-on workshop. Learn about pivot points, various ways memoirs are structured today, and how to get a reader's perspective on your life story. $105. Click here for details or to register.

Fall Online ClassesStrange Alchemy: How Place, People, and Situation Intersect in Your StoryEight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Weekly writing exercises, discussion, readings from well-known fiction and memoir writers, and workshopping your writing for intensive feedback lets you explore the balance of tension and action, how the narrative arc (the growth or change in your character or narrator) interacts with this conflict, and how "container"—the primary atmosphere in your story—can drive emotion in your story.$390. Click here for details or to register.

Your Book Starts Here: Learn to Storyboard Your Book!Eight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Learn a simple template that many professional writers use to build a strong structure of a novel, memoir, or nonfiction book via storyboard brainstorming. Great for all stages, from writers just starting a book project to those with a work-in-progress. $390. Click here for details or to register.

Your Book Starts Here: part 3Eight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. For writers at revision, with a complete manuscript draft. Small group workshopping for intensive feedback each week.$390. Click here for details or to register.

Writing RetreatsYour Book Starts Here: Week-long Writing RetreatJuly 24-28 (SOLD OUT) or October 16-20, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Madeline Island (Lake Superior)Five days of workshop, personal coaching, and plenty of time to work on your book in our great community of book writers at all stages, working in all genres, at the gorgeous Madeline Island art school. This retreat will become a highlight of your summer or fall. Lodging available in clean, cozy cottages at the arts school campus. $625. Click here for details (summer retreat) or here (fall retreat).

Independent study available for either week.

A Little about Me . . .

Mary Carroll Moore is an award-winning, internationally published author of thirteen books in three genres, writing teacher, editor and book doctor for publishing houses. For thirty years she's helped thousands of new and experienced writers plan, write, and develop--and publish!--their books. Photo by Bruce Fuller Photography.

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If you believe you have a book inside you just waiting to come out, here is a guide that will ensure your book’s arrival in the world. In clear, accessible prose, Mary Carroll Moore leads the aspiring author through every step of the challenging, rewarding process of developing and completing a full-length book.

--Rebecca McClanahan, author of Word Painting

Encouraging Words--Well-Known Writers with Large Number of Rejections--But Published!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies). Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years.Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejectionsHarry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishersThe Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejectionsJonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach--140 rejectionsGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejectionsWatership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejectionsDune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections

To all book writers: Believe in your story. Keep trying. The right home for your book is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

Want to get the creative brain going?

Book writers (and any writers) need to know how to engage the creative right brain that "writes" in images. Think of any wonderful book that's left you swimming in a setting or characters--the writer has successfully used the image-creating part of the brain. But our normal workaday lives short-circuit this part. Check out this cool video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, recounting her personal experience of a left-brain stroke and her awakening to right-brain reality. Pretty amazing fusion of brain science with what it feels like to a brain scientist having a stroke:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Flying Squirrels Bring Creative Jolt to Novelist

Flying squirrel gets into house--disrupts routine, gets novelist thinking differently. This happened to me! For two days, as I chased the squirrel (actually, it was all night since they are nocturnal), I slept very little. And got many new ideas for my novel-in-progress.Go figure!Maybe...book writers need creative jolts? Routine dulls our imaginations? How has an unexpected interruption actually been a gift for your creativity this week?

At the Loft Literary Center, I can always tell which students in my classes have taken Mary Carroll Moore’s class on book-writing. They talk about writing their book in "islands" and using storyboards to figure out how those sections relate to each other. When another student confesses to feeling overwhelmed by the material her memoir might include, they readily advise, “You should try Mary Carroll Moore’s method.” I second that.--Cheri Register, author of Packinghouse Daughter and American Book Award winner

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